Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Continue to Legitimize Terror Friendly Groups in Muslim Dialogue Hoax
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Continue to Legitimize Terror Friendly Groups in Muslim Dialogue Hoax
June 2, 2008
U.S. Conference Of Catholic Bishops Continue To Legitimize Terror Friendly Groups In Muslim Dialogue Hoax
By WILLIAM MAYER and BEILA RABINOWITZ
June 2, 2008 - SAN FRANCISCO, CA - PipeLineNews.org - As announced in a PR release by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, "A new round of the Mid-Atlantic Muslim Catholic Dialogue, April 23-24, in Washington, looked at interreligious education in the United States. The meeting, which was convened by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and Catholic representatives of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, explored teaching about different religions in private and public institutions." [source, http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2008/08-070.shtml]
As the press release makes clear this event also included a high ranking member of the Council on American Islamic Relations [CAIR] "The discussion follows upon a meeting in 2007 where Safaa Zarzour described the development of a Muslim-Catholic educational exchange by the Council of Islamic Societies of Greater Chicago and the Archdiocese of Chicago. Zarzour chaired a panel of Muslim representatives at the April 23-24 meeting."
CAIR is widely understood to be a supporter of the Palestinian terrorist organization HAMAS as well as having been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the ongoing U.S. vs. Holy Land Foundation, et. al., case the country's largest terror funding prosecution. Additionally, numerous CAIR officials have been convicted of terror related offenses, the most recently being Ghassan Elashi, founder of the Texas chapter of CAIR.
ICNA, the Islamic Circle of North America was founded in the early seventies as a da'wa propagation organization, its mission statement clearly identifies ICNA's purpose as one of establishing Islamic supremacy, "The goal of ICNA shall be to seek the pleasure of Allah (SWT) through the struggle of Iqamat-ud-Deen (establishment of the Islamic system of life) as spelled out in the Qur'an and the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad. [and to] invite mankind to submit to the Creator by using all means of communications..." [source, http://www.icnasc.org/about.shtml]
Yehudit Barsky, the terrorism expert at the American Jewish Committee, states that ICNA "is composed of members of Jamaat e-Islami, a Pakistani Islamic radical organization similar to the Muslim Brotherhood that helped to establish the Taliban."
Steven Emerson has also detailed ICNA's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood as well as its support of Shari'a.
ICNA has populated its leadership with controversial figures such as former ICNA President Ashrafuzman Khan who is alleged to have run death squads in the Bangladesh war.
ICNA conferences have in the past been the venue for expressing Islamic domination and support for Islamic jihad in places as diverse as Chechnya, Kashmir, Iraq and Bosnia. [source, http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6380].
The upcoming 2008 ICNA-MAS [Muslim American Society] national convention will feature a rogue's gallery of Islamist speakers, including Imam Siraj Wahhaj, Dr. Ingrid Mattson and Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi. [see, http://convention.icna.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=27 ]
Wahhaj has served since 1997 as a Vice President of the Islamic Society of North America, [ISNA, also an unindicted co-conspirator in U.S. vs Holy Land]. Wahhaj was personally named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 plot to bomb New York Landmarks and served as a character witness for the first WTC convicted bomber, the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, who is serving a life term for that crime.
Ingrid Mattson currently serves as President of the terror friendly ISNA.
Muzammil Siddiqi is a member of ISNA's Majlis Ash-Shura and the Fiqh Council of North America. He has also served as chairman of the Religious Affairs Committee and has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) for the past six years. The NAIT is an Islamic trust a waqf, dominated by Saudi Wahhabists which owns title to the overwhelming majority of American mosques.
For details regarding the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sorry record on Muslim interfaith dialogue, consult our January 2008 piece The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and CAIR - Interfaith Outreach Betrayed which came about as a result of our own dialogue with USCCB staff.
Clearly, as the above noted press release makes evident, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, rather than proceeding with caution on the problem-fraught concept of dialogue with Islam, has plunged headlong into the abyss.
The Conference's continuing and intentional blindness on this matter is stunning to the extent that is crosses over into malfeasance and a betrayal of all that interfaith dialogue implies. The USCCB's continued meeting with hard-core Islamists serves only to grant them legitimacy which they will then use to gain further access to power, the ultimate goal of which is the eventual imposition of Shari'a.
As we wrote earlier this year about the USCCB's outreach to the radical CAIR, "This potential for being taken advantage of is critical because any official meeting between the governing body of the U.S. Catholic Church and any other entity has consequences, primary among which is the bestowal of a kind of imprimatur on those groups; that somehow they have been vetted and not found wanting. As a result, Islamist organizations like CAIR, ISNA and others use these meetings to counter reasonable charges made by critics that they are working as a fifth column.
Participating in these sham exercises feeds into a prevailing Islamist narrative, which goes as follows, "Our critics are bigots and Islamophobes. Why would the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meet with us at our national headquarters, if there were even the slightest problem?"
In our opinion these organizations will continue misuse the process, and while the Church looks upon its well-intended efforts as legitimate cross-faith dialogue, others with hidden agendas seek only to use them in a crassly political fashion. If these programs are allowed to continue as they currently are formulated, such ill-advised conferences will cast the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops in role of enabler in a well thought out plan designed to slowly and incrementally force Western culture to bow to Sharia."
The USCCB's continued zeal in promoting fraudulent Muslim dialogue is merely the latest evidence in the Catholic Church's continuing record of ethical cowardice, lack of judgment and moral failure. http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=usccb6.2.08%2Ehtm
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